Chapter Four
In which we learn that fine art and Vadim Turgenev have important things in common.
Oksana…
I toured the Louvre in Paris when I was fifteen, it was one of the few trips my mother and I were allowed to make without my father.
I'd found an enormous painting that mesmerized me, The Abduction of Proserpine.
I stood in front of it for an hour. Hades had his thickly muscled arms wrapped tight around Persephone's waist, holding her to him in an embrace, immobile.
Her clothes were half off, fluttering behind her as he spirited her away on his chariot pulled by his stallions, dark as midnight, racing down into the pitch black.
Her pale hand was desperately reaching up, toward the light as it faded behind them.
There was something that kept me there. My mother wasn't an art snob, she enjoyed watching my reaction. Head cocked, she eyed the painting. "Ah, Alessandro Allori," she said. "I love his work. How does the painting make you feel?"
How did I feel? Shivery inside, chilled, feeling like Persephone, with the strength of his arms around me, tightly enough to take the breath from my lungs. I didn't say this to her, of course.
I feel like that now.
Vadim is a giant. A tall, terrifying dark lord, here to drag me down to the Underworld. His ice blue gaze is searing, moving over me. I can't tell what he's thinking, his beautiful face is expressionless. Maybe a man isn't supposed to be beautiful, but Vadim Turgenev is.
I'm tall, but he still looms over me, my head barely reaches his shoulders - his very broad shoulders - and he has ink crawling up the side of his neck and past his cuffs onto his fingers.
Hair as black as a raven's wing and those eyes.
The first thing he says is my name. Slowly, like he's rolling it around on his tongue, testing it out.
His voice is deep, slightly rusty like he doesn't use it often.
There's a short silence as his family and mine stare at the two of us.
"Why don't we go into the lounge and have a drink before dinner?
" His father breaks the stalemate and I gratefully follow the rest. Vadim walks with me.
Well, not with me precisely, a step behind so I'm painfully aware of him, close enough to feel the heat from his skin and the scent of burnt amber, well-worn leather and something unexplainable, maybe how darkness would smell if it was a scent.
Dinner is excruciating.
We start with stilted conversation and drinks in the lounge, which progresses to dull conversation and dinner in the Turgenev dining room.
Vadim's mother, Mariya, was kind enough to seat my father next to her husband, down at the other end of the table.
I cringe as I hear his voice getting louder with each drink.
When my mother puts a hand on his arm, he angrily throws it off, which makes me want to break this very beautiful crystal wine glass and stab him with a jagged edge.
Nikolai and Maks shake their heads subtly, and turn to talk to Vadim's brother Stepan. I've seen Stepan around. He's rash. Feckless. He's been arrested more than once for showing up somewhere very public, naked and drunk. So, I'm sure that Mariya and Konstantin have their hands full.
Vadim sits next to me. Not eating much, sipping his drink, and watching everyone around the table intently.
He hasn't said a word to me since his first greeting.
My frustration's mounting. I think we're supposed to speak to each other, maybe attempt to find anything in common with the person we're about to marry.
He's terrifying, I know this.
I'm aware that most people, even in the oligarchical magnificence of the Six Families, keep their distance. Vadim is not a man who invites conversation or confidences. But if I'm going to be trapped with this man for the rest of my life, I'd like to know something.
Unfortunately, most of my questions probably aren't appropriate for the dinner table.
Like…
"Are you a serial killer?"
"Do you drink the blood of small children?"
"Do you sacrifice animals during the full moon?"
"And what kind of animals? Do they deserve it?"
I've heard the stories about him, which seem outrageous enough that they couldn't be true.
Apparently, it turns out they are.
I'm not as terrified as I expected to be. Maybe after going through what I did, it takes a lot to spook me now.
"My father says you're starting a project in Chicago?" I ask, cutting and recutting my buzhenina. His frigid gaze drifts to mine, and I'm almost sorry I asked the question.
He nods once. Briefly.
"So, perhaps half the year here and half the year there?" I plow on awkwardly.
He nods again.
At this point, I'd almost rather sit next to my father and let him scream at me. Speaking of my entirely unlovable parent, he's waving his arms expansively, telling some ridiculously self-indulgent and highly improbable tale to an amused Konstantin.
***
When Anka and I had landed back in Moscow, it was early morning and Father's driver was already waiting for me on the tarmac.
"Are you sure you don't want to come to my house?" she asked. "Having you there would definitely cut down on how much my father could lecture me for my poor life choices."
"He adores you," I said. "Keep showing him pictures of life in Chicago and that will keep him busy."
"Call me if you need me," she said, suddenly serious. "I mean it. If it gets bad, I'll have my dad call to distract yours and I'll sneak you out the back door."
I'd managed to keep myself from thinking about what exactly my father wanted of me until that moment. Slipping into the back of the car, I was grateful to see Maks lounging there. "You wouldn't even get out to say hello?" I scolded him lightly.
He tackled me across the backseat instead. "Hello, malen'kiy zhuchok, little bug! How was the flight?" Maks insisted on calling me 'little bug' because of one summer when I was fascinated with butterflies.
"Fine. I slept." I watched him refill his drink from the little bar built into the back seat. "What's going on here?"
Maks sucked down half his drink before answering. "As a good son, I should be waiting for my Pakhan to be telling you this. But as an even better brother, I wanted to prepare you."
That thick feeling in my chest, like I'm being held underwater closed in again, wrapping around my lungs like a fist.
"He arranged a marriage for you," he said soberly. "The good news is, you'll get to stay in Chicago."
"That's good. But?"
"The bad news is…" He was hesitating again. It made it worse.
"Please just spit it out," I said. “How horrible are we talking? An ancient monster? A useless son?"
"It's Vadim Turgenev," he said, as he polished off his drink. "They're calling him the Angel of Death now, like his grandfather Alexi."
Everyone in our world knew about Alexi Turgenev, death in human form.
If he came for you, you disappeared. If you were lucky.
Sometimes, he would leave a horribly disfigured lump of meat that used to be a human being as a warning.
And now, his grandson was taking over? There's a buzzing in my ears, Maks' voice sounds like it's fading in and out like a bad phone connection.
"He's…" I lick my lips and start over. "Why would he agree? He's the kind of monster mothers use to make their children cry. I didn't think he tolerated other people."
Maks looked at me with a kind of bleak sympathy. "The only thing that's keeping Nikolai and me from spiriting you out of the country is that first, he does not kill women."
"Oh, that's good," I sighed. "He doesn't kill them."
"Secondly," he continued, "it's already done. Pakhan Konstantin Turgenev and Father have already signed the agreement."
***
Now I'm here in the Turgenev's elaborate dining room next to a monstrously tall man sitting in his chair like it's a throne, drinking and watching the rest of the interactions around the table.
I sneak a side glance. The candlelight makes him even more arresting.
Dark, straight brows over his chilly eyes, his thick lips pursed slightly.
There seem to be two Vadim Turgenevs, and I am somehow sitting next to both of them.
One that his brother smiles at, whose father’s gaze is proud when he looks at him, whose mother radiates warmth towards him.
My father, who is talking too loudly and drinking too much, only sees the other Vadim, the next Angel of Death.
His gaze skitters away whenever he accidentally glances down the table towards us.
Even my mother and brothers seem wary, quiet, like they are avoiding Vadim's attention.
They do cast occasional glances at me, checking in, which comforts me.
And in the middle of all of this strange socializing is my husband-to-be, who is exactly the same no matter who looks at him, still silent, and unyielding. Taking a very occasional bite of his food. Mostly swirling his drink as he watches everyone else.
Vadim doesn't look at me, though I notice him glancing once or twice when I answer a question from his mother, or mine.
I'm confused. This man terrifies the most powerful people in Russia.
But there has to be something in him that's not dead, or monstrous.
His family sees it. I wish I did. But even with the distance that's clear between us, I still have that shivery feeling inside me.
The feeling of thick, muscled arms wrapped around me tight.
***
Buzhenina - Spice rubbed pork with herbed stuffing.